Month: June 2015

There are always things going on that we don’t know about. Plans, relationships, connections — all happening outside of our awareness. It can drive you crazy thinking about what is going on, to think that other people are talking about you as much as you talk about them. But thinking about all this is the path to madness.

This lyric is a bit of a cheat as the really interesting part is a paraphrase of a quote from the great movie critic Pauline Kael. Promises are one of the cornerstones of a relationship, both explicit and implicit. One problem is that keeping all those promises is impossible. This can be because the promises are unrealistic but often because we overestimate our own abilities to keep promises.

The open road is a powerful symbol of freedom in the US. Let’s put aside whether it’s good that we can drive alone in our own cars from one end of the country to the other, on decent roads with regular gas stations and places to rest. There’s an appeal to the idea of loading everything into your car and leaving your problems behind. Whatever is at the other end is going to be better.

You know the feeling that something bad is coming and you don’t know what it is or when it’ll arrive? Maybe its a general feeling that is always with you, an undercurrent that you feel every day no matter your mood. You know something is going to happen to ruin whatever isn’t already ruined. Do you feel that way? I do.

Sorry about the delay. The site was down for a while and I’ve been busy. Now I’m trying to catch up.

Life can be pretty crappy. I know that’s not news to any of you. Things happen that are out of your control and you need a place where none of that stuff matters. Sometimes that place is a physical place, like your home. If you’re lucky then you can leave all your troubles on the other side when you close the door. And sometimes that place is a mental place, something that you can reach no matter where you are.

It’s so much easier to focus on what we don’t have that I’m surprised we are ever happy at all. One insult can wipe out a hundred compliments. One negative comment can make the positive ones meaningless. A fun vacation can seem disappointing after hearing the story of someone else’s great vacation. For those of us who don’t have everything, life can be full of disappointments. And none of us have everything.

You know how series on USA Network are light weight and as easy to consume as they are to forget about? Well Mr. Robot is not like that. While it is easy to consume, you won’t quickly forget it. You may even want to change some of your personal habits, or at least your passwords. Featuring a magnetic performance from Rami Malek, Mr. Robot is one of the best shows of the summer, and maybe the year.

It gets very easy in a long relationship to think of all the things you don’t like about the other person. I’m not saying that my days are filled with these thoughts, but when discord comes, which it always, does, it can be very easy to make a list. What has occurred to me lately is that the things that I really don’t like have nothing to do with my wife but are instead about me.

How do you feel about the animal part of you? Do you think about it? I don’t often think about it, yet each day I spend time and effort making sure that I eat, that I sleep and that I think of ways to be satisfied sexually. That’s all animal stuff, right? Those are the fundamental things that we need to take care of so that we can spend our time doing non-animal things, like working or writing on our blogs.

One of the hardest things to do is to keep those rushed promises you make when you are trying to keep you relationship together. It’s not that you don’t mean them. You are absolutely sincere when they are offered and you really intend to keep the peace by keeping those promises. But nothing ever seems as bad the further removed you are from the conflict, and change is hard. Keeping those promises is hard.